Bar Council: LASPO has failed

New research shows that the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) has had a devastating effect on access to justice, the Bar Council has told the government. It calls for urgent steps to restore legal aid to family and some civil proceedings.

The representative body said that five years after the act came into force it has done the opposite of what the government set out to achieve. Part 1 of LASPO and its subordinate legislation have produced a regime which impedes the public’s access to justice, jeopardises the efficient operation of the justice system, and damages the future of the publicly-funded legal professions.

In responding to calls from the Ministry of Justice for evidence ahead of its review of LASPO, the Bar Council released research which shows a worrying picture on the front line of the justice system five years after LASPO came into force.

Barristers were surveyed and interviewed by the Bar Council. The research found that:

More than 91% of respondents reported the number of individuals struggling to get access to legal advice and representation had increased or risen significantly;

91% of respondents reported a significant increase in the number of litigants in person (members of the public attempting to represent themselves in court) in family cases; and 77% of respondents reported a significant increase in the number of litigants in person in civil cases;

77% saw a significant delay in family court cases because of the increase in litigants in person;

Almost 25% of respondents have stopped doing legal aid work; and

48% of barristers surveyed do less legal aid work than before.

Andrew Walker QC, chair of the bar, said: ’LASPO has failed. Whilst savings have been made to the Ministry of Justice’s budget spreadsheets, the government is still unable to show that those savings have not been diminished or extinguished, or even outweighed, by knock-on costs to other government departments, local authorities, the NHS and other publicly funded organisations.

Andrew Walker QC: ’Knock-on costs’

’Nor do we accept that the reforms have discouraged unnecessary or adversarial litigation, or ensured that legal aid is targeted at those who need it, both of which the Act was billed as seeking to achieve. If anything, LASPO has had the opposite effect, and has denied access to the justice system for individuals and families with genuine claims, just when they need it the most.’

In its response, the Bar Council calls for the following, as steps that need to be taken urgently and as a priority:

Crime: reverse the “innocence tax” upon those acquitted of criminal offences who are unable fully to recover the reasonable costs of a privately funded defence;

Family: reintroduce legal aid in a range of family law proceedings, including for respondents facing allegations of domestic abuse and for private law children proceedings;

Civil: reintroduce a legal help scheme for welfare benefit cases;

Coroner inquests: relax the criteria for exceptional case funding where the death occurred in the care of the state and the state has agreed to provide separate representation for one or more interested persons; and

Means testing: introduce a simplified and more generous calculation of disposable income and capital so that the eligibility threshold, and contribution requirements, are no longer an unaffordable barrier to justice.

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Dear Mark Heywood. Like any legal or other problem you have to see the whole battlefield. UK of GB and NI are borrowed to 86% of Gross Domestic Product. If Jeremy and his pals get in we will end up borrowed to 186% of GDP ( Because GDP will plummet as borrowing soars and people with money escape as in 1964-1970 ). The "evil" Tories like Cameron and Clegg's "evil" Liberals and Tories will have to clear up the resulting mess with even more austerity, if recovery is even possible. It isn't that the Gov't don't care (some of them do - Universal Credit as an idea is a genuine attempt to help people), it's that we are screwed financially. If people are unfortunate enough to be arrested then they will have to find and pay a lawyer. In other words, its a return to the dark ages. We either get our act together economically or we decline. That is why the ruling classes, (viz Sir Humphrey) are so terrified of Brexit, because they are not up to the job of governing, don't believe in their fellow citizens, and don't believe that we can fight our way out to a place where we can afford to look after the poor properly again. That's why they want it all to be run from Berlin, which they so nearly arranged in the 30's but were thwarted by an old man who did believe in our people. Brexit is absolutely vital, but we won't have enough money to reinstate all the services and freebies that got us into trouble in the first place any time soon. We are going to have to earn it. Snowflakes and Millennials will be asking whether there is an app for doing this. Sadly not. Marching through the streets wishing they were French and living in Cannes won't get it done either. But it's ok. I have faith that they will, if they really think about the fundamental flaw at the heart of the EU (Fiscal control eventually equals German political control) eventually realise that the only sound and valid thing the EU flag ever represented was the Ryder Cup team.

When we leave Europe and don't have to pay in anymore we will have lots of money to govern ourselves with and as the reason for pulling out after 46 years or so had in part to do with concerns over loss of self governance presumably the government will make funds available once again to run the criminal and civil justice system to the standard necessary to show the Europeans what a country in charge of its own sovereignty can do! Or am I only dreaming?

Why would the Government change tack? Its actions save money (at least from MOJ's perspective), inhibit "crooks" getting expensive briefs (to get them off), inhibit "benefit scroungers", inhibit pesky complianants at death in custody hearings and, generally, screw the lid down on expensive "ambulance-chasing" and other morally unacceptable (to insurers anyway) litigation. All popular with the voters as they read the Daily Mail over breakfast...

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